Vladimir Nabokov
Every true novelist listens for that suprapersonal wisdom, which explains why great novels are always a little more intelligent than their authors. Novelists who are more intelligent than their works should change profession.
Milan Kundera
[Dickens] discovered the formula ‘laughter and tears’ that has been the foundation of practically every popular succes ever since (Hollywood’s as well as the bestseller’s).
Q.D. Leavis
A problem with writing the life of a writer is that writers don’t have a life.
Jasper Gerard
Write what you know around you, make use of the soil beneath your feet, of the tradition within your heart, of the struggle in your soul, of the breath in your hills.
F.H. Koch
Even a child knows that if they (publishers) don’t spend money on it they’re not going to sell it.
Martin Amis
A memoir is how one remember’s one’s own life. An autobiography is history.
Gore Vidal
Tell the story, take out the good lines, and see if it still works.
Ernest Hemingway
If the characters are true the plot will come easily.
Georges Simenon
Design an artefact which is frequently original, non pollutant, biodegradable, portable, silent, easily reproducible, information-retrievable, cheap, imperishable, translatable, accessible, aesthetically appealing, financially appreciable (the last two not invariable) and the answer is the book… far from becoming outmoded, it is remarkably resilient and adaptable.
Anthony Blond
Pay no attention to what the critics say: no statue has ever been put up to a critic.
Jean Sibelius
More than twenty-six years spent on constructing a mythology, a joint memory bank, a language, a signalling system of grunt and touch; all gone to waste… The end of a marriage is the end of civilization.
Anthony Burgess
Death is but an end to dying.
Montaigne
You destroy my solitude without providing me with company.
Marquise de Sévigné
[Men] can build houses, but they can’t make homes.
Marguerite Duras
To speak and not punish. To speak and not condemn. To speak in order to educate and enrich, not to repudiate and humiliate. To speak to cure, not to hurt and wound.
Elie Wiesel
uit: A writer's commonplace book - Rosemary Friedman (samenst.)
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